scientific-american 8

If you’re ever taken a course in Economics, and it discussed Game Theory, you may be familiar with The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Roughly, this is the problem. Assume you possess copious quantities of some item (money, for example), and wish to obtain some amount of another item (perhaps stamps, groceries, diamonds). You arrange a mutually agreeable trade with the only dealer of that item known to you. You are both satisfied with the amounts you will be giving and getting. For some reason, though, your trade must take place in secret. Each of you agrees to leave a bag at a designated place in the forest, and to pick up the other’s bag at the other’s designated place. Suppose it is clear to both of you that the two of you will never meet or have further dealings with each other again. ...

Scientific American gives up. In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of socalled evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. ...

Spammer ploys. From the Scientific American.

I was trying to buy the Mathematical American but the server seems to have some problem.

Scientific American’s review of the Simputer. Perhaps the greatest obstacle for the Simputer, though, is cost. Will people in developing countries be able to justify the expenditure of $250 on a device that may be helpful but is not essential? via Kamat’s Potpourri

An article in the Scientific American linking two-leggedness, non-vegetarianism and our brain size. Contrast that with this (funny) talk.origins post on the trade-off between a large brain and two-leggedness. via Ravikiran, via RobotWisdom

Scientists have decided not to publish in journals that do not make their archives available for free. Cheers!

It’s possible to have better than 20/20 vision: SuperVision. Apparantly, even 20/2.5 is possible.